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192 Future Uses for Flying Drones

The thought occurred to me that mounting a video projector to a flying drone could give it unusual capabilities.

My first idea was to use it for special effects at a concert or major indoor event. But a device like this could also be used for spot advertising – creating momentary images on the sidewalk or parking lot; subliminal advertising – suggesting a variety of products or services inside graphic images; emergency rescue – displaying a series of arrows to help someone lost in a forest; or image masking – to disguise someone’s body and facial features to prevent them from being monitored.

This line of thinking started me down several dozen new paths almost instantly.

Drones can be low flying, high flying, tiny or huge, silent or noisy, super-visible or totally invisible, your best friend or your worst enemy.

Simply adding a robotic display will enable us to fly in and have a private video conversation with someone on the other side of the world.

Flying drones can also roll along the ground, stick to the side of a building, float in a river, dive under water, jump onto a building, climb a tree, or attach themselves like parasites to the sides of trains, ships, and airplanes.

One moment they can be hovering in front of you and the next they can fly off at the speed of sound, disappearing into the clouds.

Combining all these capabilities, attributes, and special features into one single device will open up a world of possibilities unlike anything before in all history.

Join me as we step into the magical world ahead being unleashed with this amazing new technology – flying drones.

Introducing the Triple Checkerboard

I’ve developed a brainstorming technique called the “checkerboard” as a way to generate ideas. It’s a very simple idea – start with eight categories and list eight items in each category, enough to fill all 64 spaces on a checkerboard.

But it’s only in my most masochistic moments that I’ve decided to torture myself into coming up with a full triple checkerboard of 192 ideas. This requires a little prep work to get into the mental zone for rapid idea generation.

Naturally, jumping into an epiphany fest like this involves editing out all the goofy ones, and few others too esoteric to be meaningful.

As promised, here are the 24 categories I’ve created, with 8 examples in each category.

Tiny handheld drone

Early Warning Systems – How different would the world be if we had some advance warning that a disaster was about to happen? Each of these will require sensor swarms capable of detecting tiny changes to our atmosphere or surrounding environments.

1. Earthquake Warning Networks

2. Hurricane Monitoring Swarms

3. Tornado Warning Systems

4. Hail Preventer/Sound Cannons

5. Avalanche Preventer/Sound Cannons

6. Impending Flood Alert Systems

7. Tsunami Forecasting Systems

8. Forest Fire Preventers

First responder “get eyes on it” drone

Emergency Services

9. Missing Child Drone – Much like a hunting dog, capable of tracking the smell of the child.

10. Thermo Sensor Drones – For avalanche rescue.

11. Infrared Sensor Drones – For early forest fire detection.

12. Insect Killing Drones – Kill the insects before they kill you.

13. Poacher Drones – Tracking animals in danger of being poached.

14. Endangered Species Drone – Signals whenever an endangered species is in danger.

15. Eyes on the Problem Drone – Whenever a city receives word that there is a problem, their first response will be to send up a drone to “get eyes on it.”

16. Missing Pet Drone – Many will pay dearly to find a missing pet.

Channel 5 News with drone coverage

News Reporting

17. Accident/Incident Monitoring – High altitude monitors search for whenever a series of elevated heart rates show up, and drone will instantly zoom in for a closer look, alerting those monitoring the feed. Once an accident or incident has been detected, a series of other drones will be called in to record the entire event.

18. Time-Lapse Weather Drones – Capturing the big picture over an extended period of time from virtually any angle.

Farming and Agriculture – As the cost of operating drones drops, they will reach a point of efficiency where it becomes profitable to have a micro drone pick and transport a single kernel of wheat 1,000 miles to its final destination.

101. Home Security Drones – Whether the threat is coming from the sky or on the ground, these drones will spot the problem, alert the owners, alert authorities, and rain fire and brimstone down on any intruders.

102. 3D Printer Repair Drone – Whenever a crack or damage occurs, the 3D printer drone will fly in and print a perfect patch every time.

103. Special Drone Docks – To allow 24-7 drone deliveries, and to alert you when they arrive.

104. Diaper Changing Drones – I have no idea how this one will work, but once perfected, the demand will be off the charts.

117. Tech Lending Library – If you find an old Commodore 64 disc or Atari Space Invaders cartridge and want to have a retro weekend, just borrow one of the original computers or game consoles to make it happen.

118. Borrow an Expert Library – Flying video screen with a live connection so you can have a brief conversation with an expert who can answer your questions.

119. Borrow a Big Brother – Companionship with a drone chaperone.

120. Drone Lending Library – Borrow a drone. It will come to you.

Titan Aerospace solar powered WiFi drone!

Military and Spy Uses – In 2010 the U.S. Military spent $4.5 billion on drones. By 2018, that number is expected to reach $18.7 billion.

127. Heat Seeking Bullet Drone – Perhaps the most dangerous weapon ever to be invented, this bullet-size drone can be shot from thousands of miles away at a specific target, and never miss.

128. Solar Powered High-Altitude WiFi Drones – In March 2014, Facebook purchased Ascenta, a solar-powered drone company based in the UK. Facebook intends to use the high-altitude flyers as part of a network of linked satellites, drones and lasers that can beam Internet to remote communities from the sky. In April 2014, Google purchased its own solar-powered drone company: Titan Aerospace. The company designs ultra-lightweight, solar-powered planes that fly high above commercial air traffic and can remain aloft for up to five years.

Healthcare Drones

129. Humanitarian Applications – Researchers at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology are developing drones that can deliver vaccines and other critical medical supplies to remote locations in the developing world.

130. Canary Drones – Test out air quality inside mines and other questionable air environments.

140. The Question & Answer Drone – Wherever you walk, this drone will pose a constant series of questions to challenge your understanding of the world around you. Correct answers will be given after three attempts.

141. Documentary Drones – Film and motion picture companies using drones for aerial footage, because drones are quieter and don’t vibrate as much as helicopters.

145. Archeology – A team of archaeologists uncovered structures thought to be from an ancient Native American village in New Mexico using drones equipped with heat-sensing cameras. The thermal images enabled the researchers to see beneath the desert floor, which helped them locate the buried structures.

151. Solar Flare Monitoring – Using a diverse pattern of solar-watching drones, scientists will be able to do real time monitoring of all solar activity with far greater precision than anything used today.

152. Earth Noise Monitoring – Establishing a wide configuration of listening posts throughout the atmosphere to listen to the shifting noise patterns of the earth itself.

176. Voices in Our Head Drones – Silent invisible drone that talks to us. With a little voodoo programming the voice can sound exactly like a person’s own voice. Bad guys and terrorists can be influenced and maybe even grow a conscious without ever knowing they’re being externally manipulated.

Periscope drone, capable of seeing far beyond what’s on the ground

Novelty Drones

177. Personal Periscopes – Want to see over a tall building? No problem, and you can even view the image on your smartphone.

178. Plant Communicator Drones – If we listen closely, every plant is speaking to us.

186. Artificial Earthworms – Microbe-sized swarmbots can be built to “chew their way through” landfills and fields of toxic material as a way of improving the rate of decomposition and lowing toxicity levels.

187. Personal Prep Swarms – Once we step out of the shower in the morning, the swarmbots will dry our skin, fix our hair, and take their place as part of our ever-changing wardrobe.

189. Protective Swarms – Flying swarmbots will be capable of forming shields to protect people from too much sun, too much wind, and even temperature extremes. In personal confrontations, swarmbots will form a protective shield around people, keeping them safe.

190. Mental Conduit Swarms – Swarmbots will serve as an information conduit for our minds, forming antennae to capture wireless transmissions, forming an information-processing array for the data, floating visual displays that only we can see.

191. Remote Viewing Swarms – Remote viewing from anywhere, at any time, from any angle, will be possible as the swarm moves into whatever position we ask it to. This “eye in the sky” can range from several miles across on one extreme to a micrometer across on the other.

192. Superman Swarm – With flying swarms that serve as our clothing, the next step will be for them to evolve into an exoskeleton of sorts for physical enhancement. Flying swarms will give of superhuman strength, superhuman durability, and even the ability to fly.

Final Thoughts

The purpose of composing this rather exhaustive list is not an attempt to cover everything, but rather to show the enormous versatility of this platform.

The complete list of will easily include over 10,000 listings.

Some may think that drones will become the most annoying devices on earth. In many cases that might be true.

Without the proper protections, drones can be dangerous. The same drones that deliver food and water can also deliver bombs and poison. We may very well have drones watching the workers who watch the drones, and even that may not be enough.

Eventually we’ll find the positive uses far outweigh the negative ones, and we’ll develop the right systems to make it all workable.

As we go down this path, we’ll also be unleashing millions of new startups that are destined to drive the economy for decades, if not centuries, to come.

17 Responses to “192 Future Uses for Flying Drones”

Comments List

Oh the wonders to come as commercial drone applications are in their infancy. Heard there was a county in CO that had ‘a right to shoot’; the FAA drone policies will be ever changing as time progresses.

Brandon

One idea that no one is talking about is a drone or swarm of drones able to capture a drone violating drone regulations. The regulations will be meaningless unless there is a means to capture offending drones and identify who they belong to. Maybe the clawed drone or a swarm of drones that work in unison with a net to capture a drone. If electromagnet pulse weapons become a reality those would probably do the trick. Preferably we want an answer that doesn’t destroy the offending drone.

michael

Kale Anderson

I think this could work as a drone. I think that we can make a big drone so we can make a city that can float and make a diving board so we can dive and swim also we can make a bigger thing so we can go animal looking and stuff like that

Geraldo

Stan

eileen

I instantly hate them as 1 flew into my garden when i was enjoying relaxing in the sun which sent me running back into my house as it was taking pictures. I have a leg injury i was already nursing and was very upset to find out it belonged to a real estate company as those pictures were advertised 1 week later.

I really like this list and the fact that many of these things actually seems accomplish-able in the next ten years (if not sooner). Iain M Banks (the sci fi writer) had Drones as a integral part of his future society and the uses laid out above closer mirror his vision. Drones were able to do almost all of the above and more, the biggest difference was that they could choose when to use it and not be dependent on human control, that’s got to be the biggest take out as we look forwards to what level of integration drones will have in our society. I get the feeling drones are here to stay and will play a big part in our lives (wittingly or unwittingly)

Excellent post mate.
It gives me outstanding idea regarding upcoming drones.
By profession, i am working in aerial advertising industry. Currently , we are providing aerial advertisement through plane. Hope, we will able to use advanced drones for doing aerial advertising .
Best Regards
Ben William